Nowhere Library

My coworker Marvin has been off work for a week. He says it's a stomach bug, but he's also refusing to let us (or rather, his two actual friends from work) visit him with full care to avoid contagion and help him with basic necessities while he is down.

I wish to respect his boundaries (especially since we are not on the best of terms), but I am also increasingly worried, especially since most of his messages have been short, blunt, and uncharacteristically cold (read: borderline dismissive).

That's what I did when Matt got the stomach flu; I rounded up masks (to prevent getting sick ourselves), some coworkers (yes, I know I call them idiots (and frankly, about half of them kinda are), but they're good idiots and believe it or not our boss is actually nice, if a stubborn pain in the butt sometimes), flu medicine, some movies, chamomile tea, and the ingredients for (if I say so myself) some baller chicken noodle soup and said "I don't care what you say, we're not leaving until you sit down, shut up, and eat some gods-damned soup while watching Pixar movies."

I have… been less than cordial to Marvin in the past and fear he might take actual offence to my bargain at his workplace.

I will bring it up with Sarah and Tom and see if they are amenable to. Breaking Marvin’s door.

For the better. Remember that worm lady? She had. Besieged his front door. With worms. For a week and a half.

She had his phone.

She had his phone and we never even thought that it was not Marvin on the other end of the line. No wonder he would not pick up calls… I imagine not having a sound box because it has been eATEN BY WORMS is not great for having a verbal exchange.

Sorry. I am quite rattled. I will need to process all of this sometime soon.

Marvin now lives in the, uh- storages? Room? Of the library. I have some camping gear in there I use when I work late and figured he needs it more than I do. He will be safe from worms, at least.

Tom and Sarah are fairly alright; Tom got bitten, but Marvin improvised with a corkscrew he had lying around. I’ll spare you the details.

Marvin won’t leave the Library anymore, and I can’t say I blame him. The thing followed him from Archway to his home, it’s not too far-fetched to think it would find our workplace.

Things are a bit better at work, now. Tom and Sarah are the ones who go on site for research, Marvin and I stay back for documentation research and compiling. Bar the one time where Marvin was going around in his pants, it’s been alright. (Marvin absorbs information remarkably fast and I am starting to think the parapsychology course he took was garbage- his referencing is fine now.)

I’d like to take you up on those wards, please. I don’t trust that our boss will do anything to protect us from danger we met while doing our job, so I will take anything that will make us even a little bit safer. Thank you.

In the mean time, all we can do is… keep doing our job, I suppose.

My coworker Marvin has been off work for a week. He says it's a stomach bug, but he's also refusing to let us (or rather, his two actual friends from work) visit him with full care to avoid contagion and help him with basic necessities while he is down.

I wish to respect his boundaries (especially since we are not on the best of terms), but I am also increasingly worried, especially since most of his messages have been short, blunt, and uncharacteristically cold (read: borderline dismissive).

That's what I did when Matt got the stomach flu; I rounded up masks (to prevent getting sick ourselves), some coworkers (yes, I know I call them idiots (and frankly, about half of them kinda are), but they're good idiots and believe it or not our boss is actually nice, if a stubborn pain in the butt sometimes), flu medicine, some movies, chamomile tea, and the ingredients for (if I say so myself) some baller chicken noodle soup and said "I don't care what you say, we're not leaving until you sit down, shut up, and eat some gods-damned soup while watching Pixar movies."

I have… been less than cordial to Marvin in the past and fear he might take actual offence to my bargain at his workplace.

I will bring it up with Sarah and Tom and see if they are amenable to. Breaking Marvin’s door.

For the better. Remember that worm lady? She had. Besieged his front door. With worms. For a week and a half.

She had his phone.

She had his phone and we never even thought that it was not Marvin on the other end of the line. No wonder he would not pick up calls… I imagine not having a sound box because it has been eATEN BY WORMS is not great for having a verbal exchange.

Sorry. I am quite rattled. I will need to process all of this sometime soon.

Marvin now lives in the, uh- storages? Room? Of the library. I have some camping gear in there I use when I work late and figured he needs it more than I do. He will be safe from worms, at least.

My coworker Marvin has been off work for a week. He says it's a stomach bug, but he's also refusing to let us (or rather, his two actual friends from work) visit him with full care to avoid contagion and help him with basic necessities while he is down.

I wish to respect his boundaries (especially since we are not on the best of terms), but I am also increasingly worried, especially since most of his messages have been short, blunt, and uncharacteristically cold (read: borderline dismissive).

That's what I did when Matt got the stomach flu; I rounded up masks (to prevent getting sick ourselves), some coworkers (yes, I know I call them idiots (and frankly, about half of them kinda are), but they're good idiots and believe it or not our boss is actually nice, if a stubborn pain in the butt sometimes), flu medicine, some movies, chamomile tea, and the ingredients for (if I say so myself) some baller chicken noodle soup and said "I don't care what you say, we're not leaving until you sit down, shut up, and eat some gods-damned soup while watching Pixar movies."

I have… been less than cordial to Marvin in the past and fear he might take actual offence to my bargain at his workplace.

I will bring it up with Sarah and Tom and see if they are amenable to. Breaking Marvin’s door.

What was the Leitner called? I'll check our catalogue to see if we have more information.

I believe the title was just Doors to Nowhere. I had had it filed under the "NOT READING MATERIAL" section, so of course Reginald thought it would be perfect to stick his nose into.

I confirm we do not work for the same establishment, though I suspect you might be at one of our sister locations. My heartfelt condolences for being on the artefact collection team. That is... not a position I would wish on anyone. Except maybe Marvin? Who tries to be nice but is mostly very incompetent. He'd come back out of there with a bit more respect for the importance of good bloody references.

(If he tries to deflect with another cup of tea I swear-)

I only found two references to doors in our catalogue so far. One dating back to 1999 (it appears to be utter bogus) and one in 1924 which seems more... pertinent, but terribly difficult to research on account of being almost a century old. It did mention something about:

Doors

Nowhere

Keys

Have you had any object resembling a key associated with the Leitner? I would suggest trying to lock one of the doors (then the rest of them if it works), and the statement mentions throwing it into the Nowhere but I am not sure how far I trust that considering it would mean not getting the key back.

As for the book itself....I'm going to suggest to my boss that this particular book goes into the Nope Place (it's just a vault, really. We just call it the Nope Place because that's where the Big Nope Things go), to prevent another incident like this.

What was the Leitner called? I'll check our catalogue to see if we have more information.

I believe the title was just Doors to Nowhere. I had had it filed under the "NOT READING MATERIAL" section, so of course Reginald thought it would be perfect to stick his nose into.

I confirm we do not work for the same establishment, though I suspect you might be at one of our sister locations. My heartfelt condolences for being on the artefact collection team. That is... not a position I would wish on anyone. Except maybe Marvin? Who tries to be nice but is mostly very incompetent. He'd come back out of there with a bit more respect for the importance of good bloody references.

(If he tries to deflect with another cup of tea I swear-)

I only found two references to doors in our catalogue so far. One dating back to 1999 (it appears to be utter bogus) and one in 1924 which seems more... pertinent, but terribly difficult to research on account of being almost a century old. It did mention something about:

Doors

Nowhere

Keys

Have you had any object resembling a key associated with the Leitner? I would suggest trying to lock one of the doors (then the rest of them if it works), and the statement mentions throwing it into the Nowhere but I am not sure how far I trust that considering it would mean not getting the key back.

What was the Leitner called? I'll check our catalogue to see if we have more information.

Also y'all when someone posts fanart/fanfic/edits/etc:

Up until around 2016 or so, the like to reblog ratio was the total opposite of how it is now. And it applied on posts with fewer notes and posts with a large amount of notes:

You get my point. But over the last few years it has flipped completely:

And, of course, see OP’s screenshot.

It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that the posts with more reblogs have an astoundingly higher amount of notes because of increased exposure. Reblogging allows more people to see the content, that’s more people to either continue reblogging or at least give a like. For artists in particular who would benefit from the exposure in terms of commissions and patreon and all of that, this is a huge deal. It can make all the difference. 

Tumblr as a blogging platform was created with the intent to post and share content. It’s not meant to be a consume-only form of social media like Instagram. For fandom blogs in particular, it always boggles me that people don’t share content that they like. Tumblr was appealing for fandom in the first place because of the ability to plaster your blog with amazing things that other people made - this used to be unheard of. For me, it’s like saving something precious so you can always come back to it again. It’s giving the people who follow me something awesome to look at too. Creating and sharing content is the heart of fandom.

People rely primarily on their dash for content. Most people avoid going into tags/searches because of wanky fandom drama. So reblogs are crucial for exposure! Likes are a nice gesture, but they do nothing to help share and promote content. That’s why content creators are frustrated or moving to other platforms, or why they stop making content altogether. Tumblr has its issues, but it’s still one of the best places for exposure due to its reblog function and overall post formatting. It’s discouraging seeing content creators on Tumblr as a concept die off. This site is nothing without them.

We can enjoy making things as much as possible but when we share it and no one cares enough to show it to others, it does make us wonder why we bothered in the first place. And this isn’t a new complaint from content creators. But it has worsened over time as the likes started dominating the reblogs. 

It’s not that we don’t appreciate likes at all, notes are notes. But reblogs equal more notes, which equals more exposure, which equals happy content creators, which equals more content for fandom to consume. It’s a wholly positive chain of events that circles back around. Your reblog could be a deciding factor on whether that content creator chooses to keep contributing or to give up entirely.

- as above states ‘cringe culture’ and ‘cancel culture’ DEFINITELY plays into this and makes people super conscious about what they can reblog fully (without some twat who shames them or for them to lose followers)

- the whole ‘like’ habit is very much adapted from various other social media (a lot of people on tumblr I’ve noticed are super young and are used to this function i.e. facebook, twitter, instagram, etc)

- there are certainly way more people who aren’t creators and only come on to tumblr to either browse like those other sites and give likes and (sadly) either can’t be bothered to or have no incentive to reblog a post (again I’ve noticed this is a recent thing due to people coming into tumblr later and not recognizing the reblog function’s importance (or they honestly just don’t care)

- the search/tag function was never perfect but now it’s even more BROKEN

- the recent policing/flagging of posts earlier this year (ALSO BROKEN) that is dissuading people even more from reblogging/posting things

- and BECAUSE of the recent policing people are dissuaded and so many people have moved to other platforms

- some people are super into keeping to the aesthetics on their blogs (I have a habit of doing this)

Also I’ve noticed most of the people who stay on here have either been a really long time user of tumblr/are content creators who have accumulated and built a solid following/content creators who, popular or otherwise, rely on this platform for exposure and get work/have a lot of mutuals still on here/are willing to adapt to the constant bizarre changes made throughout the years on this hellsite (and the most recent changes are the ones that causes even the most grizzled of tumblr users to move on to other sites or at least to not solely rely on it so imagine those of which who don’t feel like they should even bother because they have no stakes in doing so)/all of the above.

Some people question the importance of the reblog over the like, and have this odd mentality of ‘ohh don’t just do it for the notes, JUST do it for the love’ which is honestly just baffling and screams of ‘hey thanks for making something I’m really into YOU SHOULD DO MORE FOR FREE’ or someone offering you a job and saying ‘oh don’t do it for money do it for EXPOSURE’. To these people let me tell you something:

Reblogs are free. And if you want to talk about EXPOSURE, reblogging a post can do WONDERS. Take it from someone who has gone through the various experiences of going to sleep after hours of work, posts it mostly for fun and for the fandom to enjoy, and then waking up to see that someone in the industry who has influence and power has noticed you. Even better? They’ve decided to hire you for work or to ask if they could spread your work around to people they know!

ok karen, then give us some ~exposure~??

likes don’t give people exposure. Only reblogs do.

There are instances where people may have themes that show their likes but MOST people do not and even if they DO have it turned on, you only see that if you visit a specific blog, and almost everyone exclusively deals in their dashboard or the main tags, where likes are not exposed.

But attye same time, artists are extremely afraid of having their art stolen because it’s so easy to download pictures from Tumblr and people can use it for their own profit without properly crediting the artists. This is why we have that change in like-reblog ratio. I mean I understand why content creators refrain from letting ppl reblog even if it would reduce their level of exposure. And if they do let ppl reblog, they easily get their art stolen. Even if they have their followers, it’s hard to get their posts appear on tumblr’ radar to be visible to viewers at any moment they check the site. The same happened to Deviant art which is why new artists find it almost impossible to stand out of the shadow of already famous artists.

i'm in Ireland and the search for that bastards name is still blocked and hidden... the legnths the british go to defend and protect their instruments of colonialism and violence is beyond belief. no justice for the victims and yet every measure taken to protect David James Cleary and his fellow murderers.

Johns Hopkins Computer Science prof Professor Peter Fröhlich grades his students on a curve: the highest score on the final gets an A and everyone else is graded accordingly.

Clever students in Fröhlich’s “Intermediate Programming”, “Computer System Fundamentals,” and “Introduction to Programming for Scientists and Engineers” figured out that this meant that if they all boycotted the exam, they’d all get As.

So they organized a boycott, milling around the hall outside the class where the exams were being sat, sternly reminding each other that if no one sat the exam they’d all get straight As, ignoring Fröhlich’s pleas to come and sit the exam.

Fröhlich praised his students’ solidarity: “The students learned that by coming together, they can achieve something that individually they could never have done. At a school that is known (perhaps unjustly) for competitiveness I didn’t expect that reaching such an agreement was possible.”

PROGRAMING.

Like half of programming is looking at sorting algorithms and asking “what could break this?” They looked at the grading algorithm (curve grading) and noticed “if every grade is the same, everything is at the top of the list” and “the easiest way to get all the grades to be the same is to set them all to zero.”